George Osborne, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have all responded to pressure and all published their information.

Today, Mr Hague told the BBC’s Today programme "we live in an age of greater transparency" and "the answer is not to fight that age, it has arrived and it will come all the more".

"The consequence of greater transparency in tax, in medical records whatever else it may be among leaders is that there has to be a maturity in the public debate about those things and a recognition that the circumstances and habits of people who are effective leaders will vary greatly.

"And that those personal circumstances are not necessarily a good guide to how good they will be as a prime minister, a chancellor or anything else," he said.

He said Parliament would be “one-dimensional” if all members had the the “simplest possible” finances.

He pointed out that William Pitt the Younger, on whom Lord Hague has written a biography, had “chaotic” personal finances but was “brilliant at handling the nation's finances".

"We've had leaders who had tax returns like [Winston] Churchill that would have been more difficult to defend in public than Prime Minister David Cameron's tax returns - but Churchill was the greatest leader of modern times," he added.

"So we're going to have to bear those things in mind and not expect everybody to be perfect or everybody to be normal.

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11:40 on 12th April 2016

I agree with Robert Peston’s analysis and his, we are all in it together, show us what Taxes you pay, most of your VOTERS are PAYE tax payers. EU Law turns our own LAWs into an ASS, that unelected judges are overruling the decisions of parliament on tax rules.
The whole world's "Rich" use their accountants to avoid paying tax. One rich American woman once said the rich never pay tax. Just set up a company say in the British Virgin Islands to "Bank" your millions, then payout as you like it for luxury houses, yachts and cars, or anything else to spend it on. Come on George Osborne find a few off-shore piggy banks to raise your taxes to give to the poor National Health and British Industry, the real capital workers a fair deal too.